INTERMAG General Assembly

Vienna

September 27 - 28, 2013

Draft Minutes

Friday, September 27, 2013 Start: 14.00 / End: ±17.00
Coffee Break: 15.15

1. Opening of the General Assembly
Gerhard Losher (BR), INTERMAG President, welcomed the members and especially Boris Vuckovic, our guest from Croatian TV.

2. Presentation round

Since we have a guest Gerhard suggested a presentation round. Every attendant gave a short introduction of her/his programme.

Boris Vuckovic/Croatian TV joined us in Vienna to explore a possible cooperation. He and Gerhard Losher/BR know each other from the Alps-Danube-Adria Magazine, a 30 year old connection of six TV programmes. Every three months an editorial meeting is held by the members during which several subjects (length 4-5 minutes) are proposed. The attendants discuss these items and decide on 5 matching reports resulting in a complete programme. Thus 4 to 6 joint programmes are planned in advance and produced. This collective programme is broadcast by all the members and not only it is very popular but it’s also cost saving since every member has to produce only one item for this show. The other items are produced by the co-members and just have to be translated.

Gerhard Losher explained the procedure suggesting that it might also work for single INTERMAG members. One could imagine a joint programme for the Baltic Sea countries or Eastern and Middle Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia etc.).

Croatian TV was a long time INTERMAG member until the mid 90s. Boris Vuckovic is interested in reviving this membership and he’ll get back to his superiors to inform them on our organisation. So the application was postponed. In a unanimous vote the General Assembly gave a mandate to Gerhard Losher to accept the programme and grant membership.

Meanwhile the Croats applied for membership and were accepted with the programme “Dalekozor“ (The Binoculars).

3. Approval of the ”Proposed Minutes”
The Minutes of the INTERMAG General Assembly in Prague, October 5-6, 2012 were approved

4. Membership

IBA/Foreign Report left INTERMAG. Since there was practically no exchange the programme chose to stop membership.

Giorgia Ginaldi/RAI succeeded Mariolina Bronzini and is our new contact at RAI. Although Speciale is the INTERMAG member Giorgia thinks TV7 could be more interesting since they broadcast shorter pieces. She’ll look into the matter.

Slovakian TV was quite interested in an INTERMAG co-operation.

Zeit im Bild/ORF is still no full member. Until now there was no interest from the board’s side to fully commit to INTERMAG. That’s why Gudrun is very important. She can clear the path and jump in as soon as the situation is favourable for INTERMAG.

10vor10/SF never attends the meetings. The editor in chief considers INTERMAG more as a kind of representation and exchange is not the main goal.

5. Election presidency

Baring in mind the expression “Never change a winning team” the three members of the presidency were re-elected unanimously. Gerhard Losher, Ingrid Thörnqvist en Udo Biss took up another two year term. And since next year INTERMAG should take important decisions, it is probably better to rely on an experienced team. Still in future other ideas and other stations could step up and bring a new spirit into INTERMAG.

6. Future of INTERMAG

Also next year no fee has to be paid thanks to a money overflow. Still from 2015 on the yearly fee of 500 € is due again. It's a low price but still a commitment to INTERMAG. The sending of invoices and the handling of finances is done by Deutsche Welle in Brussels. Next year in summer a new editor in chief will step up at the Brussels Studio. It will be his decision whether to continue INTERMAG membership and the hosting of the Coordination Centre. There are some financial advantages for the host of the CC: he receives 1000 €/year and the hosting programme is exempt from the yearly fee.

7. Exchange

Some of the members only joined last year and they shared their experiences and sometimes specific problems with INTERMAG:

Stefan Winiger/YLE had difficulties deciding which stories to put in the exchange. On the other hand YLE used several reports offered by INTERMAG members so they are interested to stay.

Barnabas Gantner/MTVA: TÉRkép brings stories on Hungary’s neighbouring countries. They don’t shoot many stories themselves and use a lot of EBU-footage. Consequently there is not much to offer. But INTERMAG has proven to be quite useful for their programme.

Adriana Dergam/CzechTV informed us that Horizont restarts in November after the elections. She also said that DW/Europa Aktuell is broadcast by Czech and Croatian TV but she didn’t consider it to be a problem. She shortens the pieces she’s interested in and no-one seems to notice it. The Czech also experienced some technical problems with the FTP servers. But overall they benefited from membership. Adriana also wanted to point out that if the Czech language is a problem she can name some experienced translators in the ordering countries that can do the job for a reasonable price. Gerhard stressed that it is not that difficult to get a translation. He highly recommended to order pieces in “difficult” languages because sometimes they contain pictures or stories you cannot order from a correspondent.

Allan Tammik/SVT feared that their own pieces were sometimes too regional and then he was reluctant to offer it.

Giorgia Ginaldi/RAI attended an INTERMAG meeting for the first time and hoped to revive RAI membership.

Eberhard Schneider/MDR also worried his programme’s reports were too regional and he wondered if he could also offer reports his desk produces for other MDR news programmes. Unfortunately that is not possible since the programme is the member and not the station.

Gerhard from his side stressed again the importance of the contacts that INTERMAG provides.

8. Additional Cooperation and Networking

Some members expressed ideas to get new members.

Stefan Winiger/YLE wanted to convince other programmes with YLE

Boris Vuckovic/Croatian TV thought Serbia could have some good shows that would fit in INTERMAG.

Adriana Dergam/Czech TV has good contacts via EBU to Spanish programmes. She would try to intensify them and attract new members from Spanish TV.

The idea was launched to swap camera teams in a bilateral way not organised by INTERMAG. Unfortunately this system is difficult to apply for most of the INTERMAG members. A station based camera team can only work for a station based programme. The necessary approval would be almost impossible to get from the different responsible departments.

9. Next Meeting

The 2014 General Assembly is scheduled for October 10/11 in Brussels at Deutsche Welle offices.

Saturday, September 28, 2013 Start: 09.30 / End: 13.00
Coffee Break: 10.45
Lunch: 13.15

10. Screening Session

List attached

President

Gerhard Losher

INTERMAG General Assembly Vienna

September, 27-28, 2013

Screening Session

No	Station	Programme	Title	Length
1.	Czech TV	Horizont	Putin’s Secret	4’52
2.	YLE	TV News	Growing Wine in the North	4’50
3.	DW	Euromaxx	Lace Creations of Fashion Designer Irene Luft	4’37
4.	MTVA	TÉRkép	Unemployment in Vojvodina	4’52
5.	BR	Euroblick	Britain – Mysterious Crop Circles	7’00
6.	RAI	TG1 Speciale	Italy – Luxury Holidays	57’00
7.	MDR	MDR-Aktuell	Grave Robbers in Northern Bohemia	3’30
8.	NDR	Ostseereport	Sweden – Diving in a Deserted Iron Mine	10’10
9.	SVT	Rapport	Murder on the Island	4’13
10.	Czech TV	Horizont	A Bloody Delicacy Made of Shark Fins	9’20
11.	NRK	URIX	Scotland – A Year Ahead of the Referendum	4’40
12.	YLE	TV News	Child Safety in Imatra	5’00
13.	NDR	Ostseereport	Estonia – Mobile Tank Sauna in Puiga	4’46
14.	RAI	TG1 Speciale	Italy – Stolen Sea	63’00
15.	DW	Europa Aktuell	Belgium – Joining the Jihad	5’54
16.	MTVA	TÉRkép	Haáz Museum	4’50
17.	SVT	Aktuellt	Animal Care Takers	6’06
18.	BR	Euroblick	Poland – Threatening the Might of the Church	7’41
19.	SVT	Aktuellt	The Vinyl Guy	3’41
20.	NRK	URIX	Chicago Violence – Youth Project	4’52
21.	DW	Europa Aktuell	Ireland – a bit of Earth	6’16
22.	DW	Euromaxx	The Pendulum Choir	5’14
23.	MTV	TÉRkép	Coal Days	5’17
24.	BR	Euroblick	Tyrol – Voluntary Work at the Farm	6’55
25.	YLE	TV News	Finland’s Smallest City Lost its Industry	5’00
26.	NDR	Ostseereport	On the Road with Truck Driver Erika	4’27
27.	RAI	TG1 Speciale	Mogadishu’s Girls Go to the Beach	55’00
28.	NRK	URIX	Expensive American Colleges	5’00
29.	DW	Europa Aktuell	Croatia/Germany: Hoping for Justice	6’10
30.	BR	Euroblick	La Palma – Astro Tourism	8’00

INTERMAG General Assembly Vienna
September 27 - 28, 2013

Attendance

Berlin DW Euromaxx Kathrin Lemke

Brussels DW Europa Aktuell Dagmar Michel

Kiel NDR Ostseereport Udo Biss

Munich BRF Wir in Europa: Euroblick Gerhard Losher

Oslo NRK URIX Elin Røstad

Stockholm SVT Aktuellt / Rapport Ingrid Thörnqvist
Allan Tammik

Budapest MTVA TÉRkép Gantner Barnabás

Helsinki YLE TV-Nytt Stefan Winiger

Leipzig MDR MDR-aktuell Eberhard Schneider

Prague Czech TV Horizont Adriana Dergam

Rome RAI Speciale TG1 Giorgia Ginaldi

Vienna ORF Zeit im Bild Arno Pindeus
Gudrun-Erica Gutt

Guest:

Zagreb HRT Borislav Vuckovic

Intermag CC Gerd Lemmens

Could not attend: RTV/Ljubljana, TVP/Warschau, SRF/Zurich